The Vain Conversation

by Anthony Grooms

  He lay for a few minutes longer, thinking that he needed his rest if he were to face Jacks first thing in the morning. He didn’t want to be dull in front of the white man. He wanted to be able to answer him question for question and fact for fact. Jacks was an educated man, and so was he, and he wanted their meeting to be the meeting of two men of equal education, even if Jacks was richer. Experience, too, is a wealth, as is education, he thought, and Jacks’ experiences could never compare to his. He had traveled to Europe, seen London, Paris and Berlin—though all through the lens of war. He had been to the deserts of North Africa, to the hills of Italy. Jacks, with all of his wealth and his University of Georgia education, had rarely traveled to Atlanta, much less out of the country. Bertrand had met all kinds of people in the army, people from all over the United States, North Africa, and Europe. Though not fluent in any foreign language, he had taken French in college, and knew enough of it and enough Italian to ask directions or to compliment a lady; he had a modicum of German and could order a ham sandwich and a beer. Jacks knew none of this. Jacks would see who he had become, no longer a potential farmhand, and never the colored school teacher that Jacks imagined him to be. He was his own man, molded by American experience. He was American.

  Downstairs, he found Luellen striking a match across the stove top. The wood in the stove, doused with kerosene, exploded, and flames leapt above the stove top, until she covered the eye. She had already taken out her bowls, her flour and fresh eggs, gathered just that morning from the hens. As he came in, she smiled at him. It was a weary smile, one that signaled a resignation to her restlessness and the absurdity of baking a cake at midnight. “You might as well get your sleep,” she said.

  “I guess this thing got us both,” he whispered, not wanting to disturb his mother, whose room was next to the kitchen, though he suspected that Milledge was already awake, having heard the clanking of the stove. He sat at the small table, facing her as she shifted flour into a mixing bowl. “What are you making this time?”

  “Just a plain one, I think. Just a plain white cake.”

  “Maybe put on chocolate icing. Mrs. Crookshank asked for another chocolate one.”

  Luellen sneered. “I don’t care what she wants. She’ll take what I make.” She measured in baking powder, salt, and sugar, cracked the eggs on the side of the bowl and poured them into the mixture. “Maybe this one will just be for us. I can’t be worried about what the whites want just now.”

  “Maybe so,” he said with a sigh. He didn’t want to think about the whites either, but it seemed unavoidable. Colored people were always thinking about white people, from morning until night, worrying about what white people do or think. Maybe there had been a time, in childhood, before he had language, that he didn’t think about white people, but for so long this world of Talmaedge County had been divided between white people and colored people, as if there were no other kind of people on Earth. There were the white churches and the colored churches, the white schools and the colored schools, the white waiting rooms and the colored waiting rooms. There was how you were supposed to act around white people and how you weren’t, and what you could say and what you couldn’t. This world of Talmaedge County was always sized up by what white people wanted and what they might do.

  “For my birthday,” he said, “I would like a special cake from you. With caramel icing, maybe, one like I saw in Paris with thin little layers with lots of creamy icing between the layers.”

  “They call it a torte.”

  “I don’t know what they call it. But I would like to have one, just to taste something different. Maybe just before school starts up again, we can go on a picnic somewhere. Maybe down to those Indian mounds. We have never seen them.”

  “Do they let Negroes go there?”

  “It’s a federal park—”

  “Doesn’t mean they let Negroes in?”

  “Well, then we’ll just go down by the river somewhere. Find a nice shoal where we can spread out a blanket. We’ll have Momma make a ham, or have Beah fry some of her chicken that the white folks so crazy about, and then for dessert we’ll eat that—what do you call it—that French cake?”

  “Torte. That would be nice.” She buttered the cake pans, then opened the oven and held her hand inside to check its readiness. “One day, husband … one day.” She sat at the table and folded her hands into her lap.

  “And why not today?”

  “I reckon you know that as much as I do.”

  “No. What I reckon is that if you don’t try, nothing will ever happen.”

  “I’m all for trying.” She clucked her tongue. “I just ain’t for trusting.”

  “It seems to me that they go hand in hand.”

  “Not if one hand is white.”

  “You know that ain’t the truth. What about your Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt? You are always touting her goodness.” Luellen had told him that Mrs. Roosevelt had started clubs for black women called “Eleanor Clubs.” In these secret clubs, the women pooled their money and made plans for when they could take over the white households they worked for. Though she knew no one who belonged to such a club, Luellen had her own Eleanor Club box where she put away a few dollars every month from the sale of cakes and eggs.

  “One in a million.”

  “What about Mr. Henry Wallace? You like him. If he runs for president he might even put a colored man on the ballot.”

  “It’ll be the last colored man on a ballot, too.”

  “What about Mr. Upton Sinclair? You like him. You are always calling his name from New Masses. And one day the mailman is going to figure out what New Masses is then we will have to hightail it out of here.” Luellen read New Masses, Opportunity, and Crisis, socialist leaning magazines. She read pamphlets that promoted equality, one called the “Four Freedoms,” and another “The Races of Mankind,” and sometimes shared these with her school children.

  “Yes,” she said. “I admit it. And there was John Brown and Abraham Lincoln, too. But they aren’t the regular whites. The regular whites will cut down a Negro as soon as look at you.”

  “Now that ain’t exactly so—”

  “It’s true enough. You mark me. Oh, now, you hear them talk about being fair to ‘our colored citizens’ and treating somebody ‘just like family.’ But, husband, you know as well as I do—if a Negro stepped up into Bethany Baptist on Sunday morning, he’ll be swinging from a tree by Sunday afternoon. And those same smiling church-going ofays will be talking about how The Bible tells us to separate the races—and if I’m not right, if the regular white isn’t a prejudiced hypocrite then how do you account for these black-hearted politicians they elect? Negroes didn’t elect them.”

  “I concede that point,” Bertrand said, watching as his wife checked the oven again. “But there are many who would do right if given a chance, and I think the time has come. Take Wayne Henson. I had known of him most of my life. You might say we grew up together since he grew up just a mile or so through the woods from here, but of course, we grew up separately. And we went to the war separately. But, Luellen, something happened to make us come together. The war changed Wayne for the better—”

  “And now he’s dead, and I wonder which of these Ku Klux Klan bastards killed him. For all you know it could have been Venable and Jacks. In fact, husband, do you think anything goes on in Talmaedge County that those two county barons don’t know of and approve of? Bertrand, I hate to say it, but you are wrong about Jacks, and you might as well have pronounced the death sentence on Jimmy Lee when you told him to trust the law. There is no law in Georgia that a Negro can trust.”

  “But things change.”

  “It hasn’t changed, yet. And I wonder if you should go to Jacks tomorrow. It’s too late for Jimmy Lee—that’s a shame—but you needn’t draw attention to yourself.”

  “It can’t hurt to talk to him.”

  “You don’t know that.” She poured the batter into the buttered pans and put the pans in the oven. “This is
such beautiful heat—” she said, “the wood stove—so rich and even. You can’t get that from a gas oven.”

  Bertrand was thrown by her sudden change of topic and stared at her while she wiped her hands on her apron, stepped back from the stove, and looked admiringly at it. It seemed nothing special to him, a Kitchen Queen with a water reservoir, its top seasoned by many years of spattering grease. He was thinking it would be risky to talk to Jacks, and he would have to approach Jacks with just the right tact. Certainly Jacks would want to save a good farm hand, but he had to appeal to more than just what was practical. He would have to appeal to Jack’s conscience, to his sense of what was right. “I wonder what Jacks thinks is right.”

  “What?” Luellen looked at him quizzically, then back to the stove. “Nothing. Jacks doesn’t think in terms of right and wrong, just in terms of what he wants.”

  “He’s had a mother and father, and no matter, he must have loved them. When you love someone, you would think it’s wrong to hurt that person—”

  “Of course he would think it’s wrong to hurt someone he loved, whether it was a person or a cow. I see what you are trying to say, husband, but it won’t work. Morality isn’t how you treat yourself, it’s how you treat others. These country ofays build glass houses around themselves so they don’t feel what other people feel—that is what Negroes feel. We become things to them, slaves, animals—just things.”

  “I don’t believe that. I mean.…” He scratched his head. “I mean, I see what you mean about the glass houses, but glass can be broken. I think about Wayne. Now maybe he was in a glass house, like you say, but then that glass got smashed open by the war, and he started to see people as just people.”

  “So it takes a war? Well, then, we need a war every day.” She sat at the table across from him. “Don’t think that I am saying things will never change, Bertrand. If I thought that, then why would I bother with the school children? But look, it took two hundred and forty-six years to abolish slavery and then we had a few years of the Reconstruction before the Jim Crow set in.…” She counted quickly on her fingers. “In three hundred and twenty-seven years, we have come just this far. I figure it will take another three hundred to get to back to the Reconstruction, when we can have more than one Negro in congress at a time.”

  “It’s not that bad. Take Roosevelt, now, he had his ‘Black Cabinet—’”

  “Even that he called it such a thing as black shows you what he thought of us.”

  “But he had Ma Bethune to the White House and Ralph Bunche in the government.”

  “And when Walter White asked him to stop lynching, he wouldn’t do it. Husband, they always have their favorite one or two of us. Their mammies and their uncles. But you cannot measure by that—you got to measure by the whole.”

  “You calling Ma Bethune, a woman like that, a mammy?”

  “I am saying that it can’t be right for just one or two of us. It’s got to be right for everybody—even the whites. Yes, even these poor, scuffling whites like that Henson woman. So it doesn’t matter if they make Ralph Bunche president of the United States—better yet, make Mary Bethune president.” She waved her hand as if imagining a newspaper headline. “Ma Bethune wins presidency—first Negro woman is president! Now that would be progress.” She turned sober. “But it wouldn’t make a difference to a poor soul like Jimmy Lee.” She opened the oven and breathed deeply. Bertrand could smell the sweet heat of the baking, full of vanilla. “Ahhh,” she said, looking at him with what he measured to be glee in her face, “Baking is so wonderful, isn’t it? It’s the one thing that Momma kept doing … after everything changed. She made the most beautiful cakes, not to mention the taste. Oh, but if only I could make a cake like Momma.”

  “Luellen.” He wanted to tell her to let it go. To try and get beyond Rosewood, to think about the future and let the ugliness of the past go away, but he said, “Do you think you can forgive them? I mean the white folks for what happened at Rosewood.”

  She turned to him and cocked her head to one side, seemingly considering the question. Then she turned back to the stove, shut the oven door. “I have forgiven, husband.”

  “News to me.”

  “I have forgiven, yes. You don’t see me out trying to kill anybody, do you? I know I am hard on them. But I am not murdering them. If I had wanted to do harm.…” She chuckled. “I would put a drop of poison in every slice of cake that gets served at Maribelle’s. Half of the whites in Bethany would be dead by now. Maybe Negroes forgive too easily. We don’t have any IRAs or KKKs. We just get on along. But I haven’t forgotten, now, and I never will. You don’t expect me to forget my momma and poppa, do you? And Big Sis?” She sat again, subdued, as if sleep might at last be coming to her. “But they don’t want to be forgiven, Bertrand. Have you thought about that? They don’t even see what they have done wrong. Oh, they’re good at whitewashing history. You can’t erase history. It’s in the people’s bones and dreams. Everywhere you look, there’s history.”

  “What y’all so loud about?” asked Milledge.

  “Ahw, Ma, did we wake you up?” Bertrand asked, turning in his chair to look at her. She stood behind him in the doorway, tying the belt of her robe. Bobbie pins showed around the edges of the paisley scarf she had tied her hair up in.

  “You would have, if I had slept a wink. What is it? Near to three o’clock? Lord, I ain’t going to be no good tomorrow.”

  “Why don’t you take the day off for a change?” Luellen said. “Let ole King Jacks fix his own breakfast.”

  “And he sure enough have a fit and fire me.”

  “Ahw, he ain’t fixin’ to fire you, not in a hundred years. He couldn’t get along without you.”

  “That’s the truth,” Milledge said. She moved around to the front of the stove, opened the oven and looked in, and then moved over to a small table on the far side of the stove where there was a basin and a pail of spring water. She dipped water and poured it into the basin. “We’ll just soak these dishes for tonight and wash them tomorrow, so we can go on back to bed.”

  “Momma, don’t worry about the dishes,” Luellen said, standing. “I’ll clean up.”

  “That’s what I’m saying, I don’t want you to clean up. I want you to go on back to bed. Whether you sleep or not is up to you, but I just as soon have you upstairs.”

  “I’m sorry, Milledge,” Luellen said. “With all that was going on, I got restless.”

  Milledge raised both palms to stop her. “I know, child. I ain’t fussing. I’m just shushing y’all so I can get at least a wink of rest.”

  Bertrand and Luellen both apologized.

  “As soon as the cakes are ready.” Luellen gathered and started to put away the bowls and ingredients. Milledge still stood on the far side of the stove. She rubbed her palms against her cheeks as if she were trying to wake herself. Then she turned to Bertrand. “What this I heard you say about Jacks?”

  “I’ve decided to go and talk to him about Jimmy Lee.”

  Milledge raised a finger as if to stop him. “Leave it. Leave it alone.”

  Bertrand sighed deeply. Long ago Milledge had lost maternal authority over him, so her admonishing finger no longer raised a sense of obedience in him. Yet, he respected her and did not want to be at odds with her. “Momma, I’m just fixin’ to speak to him. That is all. I am just fixin’ to ask him to intervene, if need be. Nothing more than that. Besides, how can I just sit here and do nothing to help Jimmy Lee? He’s not family, but he is connected to us, now.”

  “He’s a lowlife,” Milledge said. “He ain’t worth it.”

  “Every man, even a lowlife, is worth something. If not to you, then to God.”

  “Then you let God talk to Jacks. He do a better job at it than you.”

  “Momma, be reasonable.”

  “Be reasonable, nothing. Y’all figure you know everything because you went off to college and you’re young and I ain’t.” She pointed to Bertrand, sharply. “Now, you listen to me. I kn
ow more about Jacks than you could know in a hundred years. I knew his daddy and I knew all about his momma, too. I knew about him when he was a boy and I know him as a man. I have cleaned every room in his house. I have cleaned his clothes, including his underpants. I have seen him when he was sleeping, and I have seen him when he was naked.” She took a step closer to Bertrand as if to make sure he saw her. “I have seen him tell the truth and I have seen him lie. And I’m here to tell you, as God is my witness, Bertrand, you can trust Jacks no more than you can trust a rattlesnake!” She took a deep breath and looked like she wanted to cry. “Jacks is just out for Jacks! You think he helped you in college because he is a friend of the colored? He ain’t friend to nobody. I don’t know why he helped you and your brother, but I can tell you it wasn’t because he is your friend.” She turned to Luellen. “Child, it’s going to be bad for me to say what I’m fixin’ to say, but you have just got to let the law take its course. Jimmy Lee’s been a rascal a long time, and things just caught up with him.”

  Luellen seemed to consider. “I told him to run. But he didn’t. You can say what you want about him, but at least he didn’t go down like some mumbling Step ’n’ fetch it.”

  “Step ’n’ fetch it?” Suddenly Milledge appeared angry, but she spoke softly. “You don’t know the half of it. You are just a child. You ain’t been nowhere. I ain’t been nowhere either, but I sure know where I am.”

  “I know where I am, too. I know where I am better than you do.” Luellen turned her back to Milledge and continued to put away the baking ingredients.

  Milledge’s lips pursed, unsure. Then she sighed. “Yes. I know you have had a hard life.” She wrung her hands. “It’s just that I don’t like this talk. It scares me so.”